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How appropriate, you fight like a cow!

True and that was very, very good but there was at least one extremely annoying bug in Monkey Island II. When you had to win the spitting contest you had to 1.) drink that drink which made your spit think, 2.) wait for when the wind was blowing and 3.) beforehand blow the horn to make everybody leave thinking that the mail boat has arrived so that you in the mean time could move the flags closer. The third one was buggy in some versions - at least the Amiga one. You could only get them to leave once and when you played without knowing that, you probably blew the horn just to find out what to do with it and thus lost the opportunity to move the flags. I had to play through a lot of the same stuff when I found that out, it was awful.

Some fans have gone through the games so thoroughly that they have not only listed all the story errors but also figured out how you can get stuck if you deliberately try. You can e.g. lose too much money in the vending machine if you keep using it even though you don't need it anymore (but that was Monkey Island I, IIRC).

Another minor logic error that annoyed me since I got stuck due to it was in Monkey Island IV, where you, in order to win the swimjumping contest had to wear the dunce cap from the "de-piratification school" (or whatever it was called). At first, I tried to pick it up at the school since I thought that maybe it will indeed let Guybrush make a smooth landing in the water but he was reluctant to pick it up since he wasn't a dunce. Looking at some hints online much later, I found out that you indeed had to use the dunce cap as I had suspected but in order to get it, you must attend the class and give the wrong answer to everything since then he'll get the cap. I considered it a bad puzzle since whilst it sometimes can be acceptable that you must figure out a way to force the main character to do something, it was stupid that he didn't want to at first, since once he had the cap, it wasn't a problem to make him wear it. It would've been better if he had been willing to try to take the cap but the teacher had prevented it, then it would've been a typical puzzle to figure out how to get it.

You can find out a lot more here:
http://www.worldofmi.com/
http://www.scummbar.com/

I've been a big fan of adaptive game music ever since I realised it existed. The big leap, for me, was Monkey Island 2, where the background music in the starting town would gradually change mood and instrumentation depending on which house you walked into. In 1991, the effect was stunning. The tune was simple and unchallenging -- there's an mp3 arrangement here: the track is "04 Woodtick" -- but it was the adaptation that was the amazing thing. It was particularly important then because the music was pretty much the only audio component in the game: very little in the way of sound effects. (And, quite gratuitously, here's my favourite musical sequence from the game.)

However, a little thought reminds me that adaptive music goes back at least as far as Ballblazer in 1984-85 (game footage begins ca. 1:10; the first minute is what was displayed on screen while loading from floppy; note that the video and music appear to be captured from an Atari emulator that's going about 10% too fast). Not strictly music, I suppose: more like a semi-improvised percussion riff, that varied depending on whether the ball was loose or in one or the other player's possession -- but still.

Coincidence, that both games were Lucasfilm games? I wonder.

Well, only seven more years to wait!

Even BEFORE they smell your breath?

Oh wow! http://www.scummbar.com/community/games/swordfighting/ Great idea for a flash game :p

I think most of the original games were made in the 1990-1996 era when there were more restrictions on graphics. I think this forced some developers to deal with the content of the game instead of spending all the time in making it look good. To see my point, pit yourself on the tv show trading spaces. Ignoring the "reality" aspect, there is a lot of pressure to be creative when there is a budget ($1000). But if you set that budget higher ($100,000), you relieve a lot of the pressure of having to think or be "creative", or "innovative".

My favorite game of all time was "The secret of Monkey Island." It was made with the SCUMM engine. Sure, the graphics weren't "Enter the Matrix"- or DeusEx-style, but the humor was awesome. The puzzles weren't totally convoluted and not too easy either, while Elaine Marley was pretty hot in 16-color! ;) Now if only we can pump out some more games like that. I mean, I haven't laughed that hard since MST3K went off the air years ago (ignoring reruns). How many games can do that? If you played these games, just consider how long it took to create all that humor, the storyline, the scenes, etc.

Your average game developer these days can probably code up a storm, but can he write a good story? I think thats whats missing in many games: a good story. Sure, anyone can create short term objective (ie. pong!), but what about all the other elements that people like? Do people really want to play a repititive task over and over again? I don't think so, not unless its some cheapo game meant to kill some time while waiting for a kernel to compile. Granted, some people do not want to get stuck into a long game, either, which is why many have started to include a save-game option. Furthermore, a good game should not lose its appeal after it has been conquered/beaten. Sort of like reading your favorite book or watching your favorite movie a second time and finding more details you hadn't noticed before, the game should allow the gamer to "explore" other parts of the game they hadn't noticed before. For example, most side-scrolling games get boring after you beat it. Contra was popular because you could play god-mode (u-u-d-d-b-a-b-a-start), but this wasn't in the design, it was a cheat. How many people actually played this game without using the cheat after beating it? Now look at how many more DOOM worlds were created after the majority of gamers beat DOOM. In this case, both games had a crappy storyline, but it was the game engine that helped retain DOOM gamers. By allowing more freedoms to the gamer, the game would not become dull after beating it. However, a game company does not care about game retention, just about consumer retention. So they do not assume the popularity of a game, but rather try to shorten deadlines in order to release as many games before christmas as possible. There is a tradeoff between developers producing excellent quality games and the company producing an excellent quantity of games. The decisions made by upper management on how to handle this tradeoff will effect the developers ability to focus on a good story, good long-term objective game, a good game engine, and good graphics.

I think that anyone can be creative if they put their mind to it, but they need time. Which leads me to believe that the root of all these bad game design problems are a side effect of the phb's rush to produce more quantity. And this isn't limited to game software, just look at the problems from Win95 which came close to NOT making the 1995 deadline. Oh yeah, and then there's my favorite quote from Bill: "If you can't make it good, at least make it look good." Hmm...

There are other factors too, probably related to the limited gaming experiences of the developers and the availability of game engines. If we trained game developers by having them play e

Being very fond of those old Lucas Art games, i though giving away a few links about the SCUMM VM may be interresting for other /.ers.

- The SCUMM VM (already on /. here (Linux SCUMM Interpreter), and here (Lucas Confuses ScummVM With Abandonware).
- The SCUMM Bar, sadly down untill mid-july (but not closed!), is a reference on the genre, with nice interviews with the original developpers of the first games.
- The International House of Mojo
- WWHS
- The Big Whoop Fairground (Monkey Island)
- The Legend of Mokey Island

Well from there you can find tons of links to fan sites...

Actually Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders was my first introduction to the genre when i was around 13, on a now old C64. This game was really crazy and got me so addicted that it was a reason for my parents to buy me a english/french dictionnary. There's a few projects from fans for a follow-up:
- Zak McKracken
- Zak McKracken and the Alien Rockstar
- Zak McKracken Between Time and Space

Finally some of you may also want to have a look to the news groups alt.games.lucas-art.*

have fun!

..at least, that's how it was for me.

Lucasarts didn't bother to even ask creator Ron Gilbert if he had any input in Monkey Island 3, since they owned the rights to the games. The result was a quite poor followup to a supurb series which would have hooked in many new gamers to the genre. Lucasarts attempted to continue Gilberts' story and ended up tarnishing the story with countless plotholes.

New gamers seem to be looking for the violent and flashier games while adventure game lovers look for the trickier and humourous.

Incidentally, if you like the theme too theen go here to download all the diferent versions of it

http://www.scummbar.com/resources/downloads/mp3.ph p